Face the Stress of Success

Tax season lessons show success alone is no cure for stress.

Check the Stress-O-Meter, get the benchmarks.

by Rick Telberg
At Large

Just because you’re one of the best accountants in the business doesn’t mean you don’t lose sleep at night. In fact, achieving the highest level of performance in this profession can actually add to your worries, even as it adds to your bank account. Take a look, for example, at some of the data we’re examining from our Tax Season 2007 survey.

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Posted on April 29, 2007
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Looking Back at Busy Season 2007

Key Indicators: 39% stressed out; 53% call it a ‘worse’ season; but financial benchmarks look strong. What’s the story? Read the comments for some clues.

Looking back on the busy season, 39% of practitioners are reporting that they suffered at least “Frequent or Constant Stress,” including 11% who said they were “TOTALLY CRAZED!”

What’s cause of the stress?
Some comments:
>>>A few clients that were slow pay. Hired new employee with little tax prep experience
>>>As always, last minute clients dropping off records for 2006. Then, expecting us to complete it overnight. That is the only thing that seems stressful.
>>>Balancing work load, training, and client demand
>>>Change in Louisiana tax credit for Insurance
>>>client demands
>>>Client expectations/too much work
>>>Client pressure for completion of returns.
>>>Client that was overly demanding.
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Posted on April 29, 2007
Filed Under BSG RESEARCH | 2 Comments

Quiz: Can You Name 6 Out Of 6?

The late Charles Shulz was famous for being the creator of the comic strip “Peanuts.”

But he came up with a pair of little quizzes once that he used to put into perspective who the real heroes in our lives should be. Invest a minute or two in these two:

Here’s the first quiz:
1. Name the wealthiest person in the world.
2. Name the last Heisman trophy winner.
3. Name the last winners of the Miss America contest.
4. Name a person who won a recent Nobel Prize.
5. Name the last Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.
6. Name the last World Series winner.

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Posted on April 29, 2007
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Build, Buy (or Sell)?

It’s a seller’s market for CPA firms.

by John Ezell, CPA

Buying or selling a CPA practice is dramatically different today from 20 years ago, and it’s a seller’s market. In the ’80s an exiting owner was likely to sell to an interested younger CPA for a small percentage of fees over a five- or 10-year period. The current market is a lot more varied: Public companies and large firms swallow up small ones, independent firms merge to get big, and young professionals buy their first practices more often than build them. At the moment, that adds up to more potential buyers than owners interesting in selling.

Continue to the full article at the AICPA Journal of Accountancy… Read more

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Posted on April 26, 2007
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COMMENT: John Tyler, CPA, about “Working Smarter, Not Harder”

A more specific way of describing “Working Smarter, Not Harder” would be to illustrate techniques for leveraging both professional skills and processes within an organization. For example, “How to use Excel as a text manager for task documentation, and document extraction.” An example: create your own checklist from a loan agreement.

John Tyler, CPA
Cambridge, Mass.
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Posted on April 24, 2007
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Tax Season 2007 Grinds to a Close

Did you feel ‘the stress of success?’

Check the Stress-O-Meter, get the benchmarks.

by Rick Telberg
At Large

Tax season is barely finished, but the postmortems have only just begun.

In the earliest, most preliminary, soundings from our (only slightly tongue-in-cheek) Stress-O-Meter poll, about twice as many practitioners are telling us that this year’s tax season was measurably more difficult than last year’s.

But stress ratings remained relatively unchanged, with about 32 percent reporting the highest levels of stress this year, compared with 30 percent last year.
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Posted on April 23, 2007
Filed Under BSG [CPA TRENDLINES] | 1 Comment

Tax Pracs Race to the April 17 Finish Line

Through the last Sunday of Tax Season 2007, practitioners raced to the close.

Preliminary data from our suvey of more than 1,000 professionals yield these highlights…

Stress Levels,
cum. thru April 15 2007

Some 30% of tax practitioners reported high stress levels at some point during the tax season through April 15.

Worse vs. Better,
cum. thru April 15 2007

Overall, 39% reported a worse tax season that the year before, with 30% reporting improvements, and 31% unchanged.

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Posted on April 21, 2007
Filed Under BSG [CPA TRENDLINES] | 2 Comments

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